scholasticism

[ Eng.scholastic; -ism.] Philosophy & Church Hist .: The name given to a movement which began with the opening of cloister schools by Charlemange (742-814), attained its greatest development in the early part of the thirteenth century under A quinas and Scotus, and, after receiving a check from the labors of Roger Bacon (1214-92) and the criticism of Occam (died 1347), gradually subsided at the Renascence. Scholasticism was the reproduction of ancient philosophy under the control of ecclesiastical discipline, the former being accommodated to the latter, in case of any discrepancy between them. It had two chief periods: (1) That from Scotus Erigena (died circ. 886) to the beginning of the thirteenth century, in which Aristo tel i an logic and Neo platonic philosophe mes were pre ed into the service of the Church; and (2) from this time till the Renascence and the Reformation, marked by the adaptation of the whole Aristo tel i an philosophy to theology. Alexander of Hales (died 1245) seems to have been the first scholastic who was acquainted with the whole of Aristotle's works and the Arabian Commentaries thereon. In the first period arose the Nominalists Realists; in the second the Scotists and the Thomists. [See these words; SCHOOLMEN.] "But when the belief of the Church had been unfolded into a complex of dogmas, and when these dogmas had become firmly established, it remained for the school to verify and systematize them by the aid of a corresponding reconstruction of ancient Philosophy; in this lay the mi ion of Scholasticism."- Ueberweg : Hist . Philos . (Eng. ed.), i. 262.